


Item #1204

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [4]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 19:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5346200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Item #1204 in the Evidence Locker is an ugly Christmas sweater knitted by Mrs. Pauline Fremont...</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Item #1204

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: Ugly Christmas sweater.

Item #1204 in the Evidence Locker is an ugly Christmas sweater knitted by Mrs. Pauline Fremont for her twelve-year-old grandson. 

The old woman hadn’t meant any harm by her Christmas gifts. She’d just wanted to have a happy family holiday. One in which her alcoholic son wasn’t fighting with her adulterous daughter-in-law. One in which her teenaged granddaughter wouldn’t swear, accidentally set fire to the clothes hamper while sneaking a smoke in the laundry room, and go storming out of the house halfway through Christmas dinner. One in which her pre-teen grandson would look up from his hand-held video game just once, or say thank you for a single gift instead of complaining.

And if those wants had somehow made their way into her handmade Christmas sweaters, looping themselves into every row she knitted, so that when her family had grudgingly donned the finished products to humor her, they suddenly found themselves transformed into cheerful, smiling, merry-making Christmas zombies who hadn’t been able to stop celebrating the holiday until six days into January when Simon and Marshall had finally stumbled across them, well that was just mega-Eerie-weirdness, and not at all Mrs. Fremont’s fault.

Simon and Marshall had burned all the sweaters but one, which they’d taken to the Secret Spot out of the necessity of keeping evidence. Marshall, who swears they did the right thing by intervening and turning the Fremonts back into their normal, terrible selves, objects to the sweater’s very existence not only on general anti-mind control principles, but also for the garish and lopsided giant picture of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer it bears on its front.

But Simon, when he knows Marshall is busy with something or someone else and won’t catch him in the act, sometimes secretly makes his way up to the Tellers’ attic and slips the ridiculous-looking thing over his head. 

He knows what he’s getting into, so he always makes sure to take the sweater off again before it takes over his mind completely. But for those few moments he’s got it on, the air smells like cinnamon, pine, and baking cookies, and is filled with the sound of carols and gentle laughter. For those few moments, he knows—as surely as he knows anything—that he has a family who loves him, that there is joy to be found everywhere, and that this a day to be merry.

For just a very few moments, Simon Holmes is at peace.


End file.
